CVE-2025-66516

High

Description

Critical XXE in Apache Tika tika-core (1.13-3.2.1), tika-pdf-module (2.0.0-3.2.1) and tika-parsers (1.13-1.28.5) modules on all platforms allows an attacker to carry out XML External Entity injection via a crafted XFA file inside of a PDF. This CVE covers the same vulnerability as in CVE-2025-54988. However, this CVE expands the scope of affected packages in two ways. First, while the entrypoint for the vulnerability was the tika-parser-pdf-module as reported in CVE-2025-54988, the vulnerability and its fix were in tika-core. Users who upgraded the tika-parser-pdf-module but did not upgrade tika-core to >= 3.2.2 would still be vulnerable. Second, the original report failed to mention that in the 1.x Tika releases, the PDFParser was in the "org.apache.tika:tika-parsers" module.

SeverityHigh
CVSS8.4
Exploit probability—
ProductApache Tika
PublishedDec 4, 2025
First seenDec 4, 2025

How to fix

Update
  • apache tika3.2.2 or later
  • org.apache.tika:tika-core3.2.2 or later
  • org.apache.tika:tika-parsers2.0.0 or later
  • org.apache.tika:tika-parser-pdf-module3.2.2 or later

Affected products

ProductAffected versionsFixed in
apache tika1.13 ≤ v < 3.2.23.2.2
org.apache.tika:tika-coreMaven1.13 ≤ v < 3.2.23.2.2
org.apache.tika:tika-parsersMaven1.13 ≤ v < 2.0.02.0.0
org.apache.tika:tika-parser-pdf-moduleMaven2.0.0 ≤ v < 3.2.23.2.2

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